Industrialization and urbanization have drastically changed the face of our planet, and the number of untouched natural habitats for wildlife is shrinking.Conservationists are tryingto understand remaining biodiversity in order to createsanctuaries that preserve it. One of the challenges they face is how to make connections amonginformation derived from different methods of evaluating the Earth's life.

One approach to getting data onbiological diversity involvesfield inventories of species. Another evaluates ecosystem processes by dividing the Earth into categories based on vegetation (forests or grasslands, for example) and subsequently analyzing properties of that category's plant life. But critical information isoften missed when only one method is employed.

But these two types of inventories are actually linked. This link goes by the name"functional diversity," which represents the features oforganisms that influence both their individual fitness and their contribution to the function of ecosystems that contain them. In a recent investigation published in Science, a team of ecologists has used an advanced aerial imaging method to explore the functional diversity of plant communities.

A good grasp of functional diversity is critical to understanding this study. At its core,functional diversity is a type of biodiversity that describes the activities and processes thatorganisms engage in as they interact with their surrounding community and ecosystem. To give an example, one plant may produce fruit that feeds other species while extracting nitrogen from the soil.

Plants are an integral part of any ecosystem, and their diversity is inextricably linked to the biological, chemical, and physical processes that occur within thatecosystem. Though our understanding of plants' roles in ecosystemshas grown over the years, we don't know enough about how their traits vary over largerareas. This makes coming up with effective conservation plans challenging.

Astrong understanding of the functional diversity of an ecosystem can take years of study. The ecologists behind the new workwondered whether it was possible to get a decent understanding in a shorter amount of time.So they attempted to track functional diversity through remote measurement of theforestcanopy, using traits that are able to indicate the presence ofdifferent plant species and communities, as well as their health.

In order to identify these critical plant canopy traits, the team took a step back to consider the most critical processes in plant growth and health. After identifying these processes, the ecologists were able to identify measurable traits directly associated with these processes.The most obvious one isphotosynthesis, the process by which all plants use energy from sunlight to produce sugar. Photosynthesisis highly dependent on nitrogen andwater in the leaves, as wellas theleaf mass per unit area, all of which can be sensed.

Next, the team expanded its consideration to things thatdepend on the local conditions of aplant's habitat, such as topographic and soil features. The presence of key chemicals in leaves, like phosphorous and calcium, is indicativeof these processes. The presence of these chemicals isalso closely related to changes in the species that are presentin tropical forests, and so they can be used to track turnover of the canopy.

Finally, the scientists thought about long-term processes, like evolutionary changes and response to pathogens. These can be tracked through defense compounds found in leaves, such as polyphenols and lignin.

Focusing onseven canopy traits, the researchers used remote sensing to explorethe functional diversity of plant communities.

The team focused on Peruvian tropical forests as a model system, since they are exposed to a range of tropical conditions, pressures from land-use, and attention of conservationists. Combining advanced aerial imaging with a form of artificial intelligence, the ecologists generated maps of a large portion of the tropical biosphere, detailing several aspects of functional diversity.

Analysis revealed that the seven forest canopy traits selected by the ecologists were largely uncorrelated, so they providea breadth of information. Mapping these traits revealed functional variation in the forests, driven by things likegeology, elevation, hydrology, and climate.

To better understand what their data told them, theecologists used 301 well-studied forest inventory plots located in the Peruvian Andes and Amazon. They found that canopy functional composition, based on information from their individual trait maps, was related to the species present, which were identified through thefield inventory data.

The team integrated the seven mapped canopy traits to identify common functional properties among coexisting species. Using this information, they identified 36 functional classes of forest, which clusteredinto six forest functional groups. The researchers suggest thattheir spatially explicit data may be used to bridge the gap between the distribution of plant species and the biological processes that go on in forests.

The ecologists were particularly interested in understanding how their data could be usedto further conservation efforts. Each functional forest group was analyzed relative toareas that are threatened, protected, or remain conservation opportunities based on government land allocation data. The researchers found that in each forest, up to 53 percent of the mapped area could be an opportunity for new conservation action, based on government information of how the forest is currently allocated.

This information could be used to guide conservation initiatives to mitigated continued loss of forests from the Andes-to-Amazon. But the newly minted method is far more important, since it works with data that's relatively quick and easy to obtain. That makes evaluating other regions for understanding of conservational opportunities easier.

Science, 2017. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaj1987 (About DOIs).

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Guiding ecosystem conservation using airborne lasers - Ars Technica